1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to a housing arrangement for a pressure plate assembly of a friction clutch, where at least one mass part, especially a motion stop for the clearance-producing arrangement of the pressure plate assembly provided to detect wear, is provided on the housing arrangement.
2. Description of the Related Art
A pressure plate assembly for a friction clutch with this type of housing arrangement is known from, for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 6,123,180. A motion stop is attached to a circumferential point of the housing arrangement of this pressure plate assembly. The connection can be a screwed connection using threaded bolts, for example. The motion stop can be stamped out of sheet steel, like the housing arrangement or housing component itself. As a result of the attachment of this motion stop, especially by means of a threaded bolt, an imbalance is introduced in the area of the housing arrangement or the entire pressure plate assembly, which results in particular from the fact that no appropriate compensation is provided in the form of several similar motion stops positioned symmetrically around the circumference.
It is the task of the present invention to ensure that, while a housing arrangement of this type or a pressure plate assembly equipped with this type of housing arrangement is operating in rotational mode, undesirable oscillations are not created by unbalanced masses.
According to the present invention, this task is accomplished by a housing arrangement for a pressure plate assembly of a friction clutch, where at least one mass part, especially a motion stop for the clearance-producing arrangement of the pressure plate assembly provided to detect wear, is provided on the housing arrangement.
It is also provided that an imbalance-compensating formation is provided on the housing arrangement, which formation compensates essentially completely for at least the imbalance introduced by the minimum of one mass part.
By means of the present invention, therefore, a housing arrangement is obtained which, as a result of its built-in imbalance compensation formation, ensures that the assembly created by attaching the housing arrangement to the motion stop is essentially already without any imbalance in and of itself as soon as the minimum of one mass part, e.g., a motion stop, is attached. This means that it is no longer necessary for other assemblies of a pressure plate assembly to be designed to compensate for imbalances in the area of the housing arrangement. In particular, it is no longer necessary to compensate for imbalances by installing some sort of compensating measures on the pressure plate of the pressure plate assembly, and thus the elements usually used to connect a pressure plate of this type to the housing arrangement, e.g., elements such as tangential leaf springs, do not have to be designed to transmit significant amounts of force to correct for imbalances.
For example, it can be provided that the minimum of one mass part comprises a blocking element attached to the housing arrangement. In the present invention, it is also preferable for the housing arrangement to be essentially ring-shaped, the radially outer area of the ring being designed to be attached to a centrifugal mass arrangement. This housing arrangement has a pass-through opening to allow a release mechanism to interact with a stored-energy device, where the imbalance-compensating formation is provided essentially by giving this pass-through opening an appropriate shape. Because a housing arrangement of this type can usually be produced by stamping and bending a piece of sheet steel, it is ultimately possible to obtain a housing arrangement of this type with the required mass distribution without the need for additional machining or installation steps; that is, it is sufficient merely to give the pass-through opening an appropriate design or shape to arrive at a mass distribution which, after the motion stop, for example, has been attached, ensures that the assembly is essentially free of imbalance, in which assembly the formation serving to compensate for the imbalance ultimately constitutes an integral part of the housing arrangement itself.
To arrive at a mass distribution able to compensate for the imbalance introduced by a mass part, it is proposed that the pass-through opening have a shape which is neither rotationally symmetric nor radially symmetric relative to the rotational axis of the housing. It is possible, for example, for the pass-through opening to have the approximate form of a segment of a circle.
The present invention also pertains to a pressure plate assembly for a friction clutch, where the pressure plate assembly has a housing arrangement according to the invention; a pressure plate held in the housing arrangement with the freedom to move in the direction of a rotational axis; a stored-energy device; a wear-compensating device located essentially on the pressure plate in the path of force transmission between the stored-energy device and pressure plate, where the wear-compensating device has at least one adjusting element which can move in an adjusting direction to compensate for wear; and at least one clearance-producing arrangement, which cooperates with at least one motion stop mounted on the housing to detect wear.
To make sure that no excessive imbalance-compensating forces need to be transmitted in a pressure plate assembly of this type, especially in the area of the elements which provide the friction-locking connection between the pressure plate and the housing arrangement, it is also proposed that a first assembly comprising the housing arrangement with the minimum of one motion stop and a second assembly comprising the pressure plate with the wear-compensating device and the minimum of one clearance-producing arrangement be designed essentially without any imbalance in and of themselves.
Because, even during the assembly of a pressure plate assembly of this type, there is always the danger that certain residual imbalances will be present as a result of manufacturing tolerances, it is proposed that the pressure plate assembly be balanced to compensate essentially completely for any residual imbalance which may be present after the components of the first assembly have been attached to the components of the second assembly.
The present invention also pertains to a friction clutch in which a housing arrangement according to the invention or a pressure plate assembly according to the invention is provided.
Other objects and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. It is to be understood, however, that the drawings are designed solely for purposes of illustration and not as a definition of the limits of the invention, for which reference should be made to the appended claims. It should be further understood that the drawings are not necessarily drawn to scale and that, unless otherwise indicated, they are merely intended to conceptually illustrate the structures and procedures described herein.